When Linda and I decided to sell our house, put the important things in storage, donate the rest to local charities, and travel for the next several years, it was a few months before we felt comfortable telling anyone.
Partly, I think, because we needed to get used to the idea ourselves, and partly, I think, because we needed to get things started to be sure we could actually do it.
I was getting bored with what I was doing β litigation support consulting for technology intellectual property cases. It was time for a change, so why not make it a big one. Which started me thinking. Why do so many people want to travel? What is the appeal? And even more interestingly, why did we want to travel? Of course it is fun to travel, but it is more than that.
When you travel you learn more about the world around you β the kinds of people and the kinds of experiences available. Or sitting in a sidewalk cafe in Paris and talking to Parisians about how different their attitude towards life and work is from that of people living in Silicon Valley, or most Americans for that matter. The experiences you have when traveling can teach you about yourself.
They can broaden your perspective and give you a new set of understandings about how other people do things and think about their world. You become more aware of a world not filled with people just like you Americans, in our case , that simply speak a different language and live in places with older buildings and a deeper history, and you realize that the same ideas can have different meanings based on culture.
